After the gold rush here was a harvest of a different kind for Great Britain's Olympians. With the entire home Olympic experience threatening to turn rather giddily medal-coloured in the glow of an improbable weekend of athletic success, there was something resembling a rush for the exits on Monday afternoon as four British teams left their home Olympics within the space of an hour and a half – and not just these Olympics but perhaps even all Olympics. For the rag-tag brigades of Team GB handball, basketball, volleyball and water polo it may be not so much au revoir as adieu after seven years and several million pounds in the making, followed by one short week in bloom.

This was a glorious star-burst of British failure, defeat without dishonour from this estimable quartet of part-timers. By 5.00pm the hand-ballers had gone. Minutes later the volleyballers were done too. At 6.20 it was the turn of the basketballers to trudge off into Olympic hiatus, just as water polo began its own final goodbye 500 metres away. On Saturday this correspondent had witnessed in the flesh five British Olympic gold medal performances. Here was the flip-side, a rat-a-tat of Olympic evictions, with handball kicking off the reverse-golden run at the Copper Box where Team GB faced Iceland in the final match of an infectious Olympic week.

Handball was established in Britain only six years ago, a direct response to impending Olympic-dom. It is a brilliant sport, though, a cross between basketball and five-a-side football that revolves around its array of bravura close-in finishes: the pile-driver, the slot to the corner, even the cheeky dink, the palm-Pirlo. On Sunday the Duchess of Cambridge had popped into the changing rooms to congratulate Britain's women after their match against Croatia (they lost all five). And here every seat was full again as the players emerged for their own glorious moribund farewell.

As Britain's men edged into the lead early on to vast roars inside the Box, anything seemed possible, with the Guardian columnist Bobby White in astonishing form, not so much blocking shots left right and centre as simply blocking any shots at all, such is the hapless lot of the handball goalkeeper. We will rock you, the crowd chanted, close to sporting delirium, but Team GB was already being rocked. A rocking was undoubtedly in progress. Whither handball now? Could this really be the end of this surge of unexpected momentum? Let's hope not. To paraphrase Whit Stillman, handball is surely too great and too much fun to be gone forever.

Six miles across town at Earls Court, the first and perhaps last British men's Olympic volleyball team were underway in their own final dead rubber. This cobbled together odd-job of part-timers were sure of a rapturous reception from the temporary stands but volleyball too faces a fraught Olympic future.

If the men's team has an ad hoc feel, the women's team are the stuff of a stirring Hollywood underdogs movie script. They lost their funding before the Games but decided to soldier on in self-sustaining fashion, organising charity bike rides and the like. Both teams exit with heads held high but also beneath a pall of uncertainty. Who needs them now, all Olympic duty done?

If nothing else, those involved have an unforgettable story to tell. Perhaps, fertilised by Olympic exposure, volleyball can rise from the leisure centre floor and leap for the strip-lights. For now defeat by Argentina was a fifth Olympic shellacking for these estimable conscripts of the block and smash.

And still they came. At the Stratford basketball arena there was a similar sense of ending, albeit perhaps not of a full stop. In the event, with the exit gate looming, Team GB's basketballers produced the best result in modern British basketball history, a 90-58 tournament thrashing of China. The greatest result, that is, in the past seven years, before which Britain did not have a men's team at all, astonishingly given the global reach of the sport. A decent showing at the European Championship finally persuaded the International Basketball Federation to dole out a host nation slot at these Games, coupled of course with the presence of the wonderful Luol Deng of the Chicago Bulls, who has been on board as team leader all along.

Deng it was who led GB to victory inside what is known locally as The Marshmallow, a large disposable arena that resembles, from a distance, a giant screwed up ball of paper, and which is due to be dismantled after the Paralympic Games and shipped off to Rio. If the atmosphere inside the more cavernous Crumpled-Ball-Of-Paper lacked the Box's fevered handballisms, this is perhaps understandable. This is not Dodgeball, an Underdog Tale. It is instead a toehold for a major global industry, one that is like football rather slumming it here. There were loud, if not unconstrained, cheers as GB moved to 72-48 in the final quarter. And at the end there was a protracted musketeer-style hand grab from Team GB and some tears too as the players walked off. This team will be back, albeit shorn of its Games-bound gloss. The Olympic adventure may yet even turn out to be a high watermark for Britain's basketballers.

Even as they departed, three sides of Great Britain's quadruple Olympic eviction already complete, the water polo team were under way half a kilometre across the park, another dead-rubber appearance for Britain"s minor sport legions and an uphill task against the mid-table Montenegrins. Technically Britain are the third most successful Olympic water polo nation of all time, though they have not actually sent a team to an Olympics in 52 years. Again this is a labour of love for amateur players corralled into an Olympic presence. Warmly received, roundly defeated and out of their home Games at the first hurdle, Team GB water polo were at least in ample company on Monday evening.